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. . . see "JOURNALISM" for related links ^^ The portrayal of lawyers in literature (if you can call it that), on TV, and in the movies has grown darker, more cynical. The same is true of law enforcement officers. At one time, police, detectives, and others of this breed were usually portrayed sympathetically. Once in a while, the police were shown as bumbling fools, as in the old silent movies about the Keystone Kops. In most "private eye" novels and movies the private eye, not the police, solves the case. This tradition is at least as old as Sherlock Holmes, whose instincts were always sounder than those of poor Inspector Lestrade. But in the Sherlock Holmes stories, and in most novels about private eyes, the police were merely incompetent, or less acute than Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot or Miss Silver or the other amateurs; they were rarely if ever brutal and malevolent. Until roughly the 1960s, the FBI and the CIA were also invariably good guys — heroic crime fighters, as shown on such programs as the FBI in Peace and War. But this is emphatically no longer the case. Portrayals of the police, the CIA, the FBI in the late decades of the century were negative, if not downright paranoid. This is true, too, of portrayals of government in general: movies, in particular, peddle the most extreme conspiracy theories: about the Kennedy assassination, or the machinations of the CIA. In The Manchurian Candidate, the Communists brainwash a man and train him to carry out an assassination that would turn the government over to evil conspirators. (The plot fails in the end.) The president is not immune from these images of darkness. True, in Air Force One the president (a handsome dog played by Harrison Ford) is as heroic as one can possibly get. In other movies of the 1990s, however, the president has been a villain; or even a deep-dyed criminal. Earlier, in Dr. Strangelove, the president was sensible enough, but he was surrounded by dangerous fools, and a lunatic in the air force set off a nuclear holocaust: this was a black comedy indeed. Popular culture is also quite ambiguous in the way it portrays the outlaw, the gunman, the Mafia — the people on the other side of the law. Hays office rules insisted that crime must not pay; criminals had to be brought to justice. [ . . . ] --Lawrence M. Friedman (b. 1930) _American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002], ch. 20 "Taking Stock", pp. 593-4 ^^ It is imperative in the political interest of the state not only that the whole nation participates in broadcasting, but that the entire nation is ready to receive radio programmes at any moment. --Nazi propagandist Artur Freudenberg [in 1939] The news media must take partial blame for incidents such as the Columbine shooting. The entertainment industry sells fantasy. We sell reality. By placing images of bloodied high school students on loop in an attempt to boost our ratings, we are telling potential killers that their criminal handiwork will help them achieve the attention and notoriety they seek. When we as reporters encourage grieving parents to abandon their families the day after losing their children to discuss how it makes them feel, we have lost our journalistic integrity. I no longer wish to be a part of this exploitation. --John Gibson, upon resigning as host of MSNBC's "Internight" in 1999. - [It] is this inability [of network TV anchors] to see liberal views as liberal that is at the heart of the entire problem. This is why Phyllis Schlafly is the conservative woman who heads that conservative organization but Patricia Ireland is merely the head of NOW. No liberal labels necessary. Robert Bork is the conservative judge. Laurence Tribe is the noted Harvard law professor. Rush Limbaugh is the conservative talk show host. Rosie O'Donnell is simply Rosie O'Donnell, no matter how many liberal opinions she shares with her audience. And that's why the media stars can so easily talk about "right wing" Republicans and "right wing" Christians and "right wing" Miami Cubans and "right wing" radio talk-show hosts. But the only time they utter the words "left wing" is when they're talking about an airplane. --Bernard Goldberg, _The Wall Street Journal_ [24 May 2001] - Media is a word that has come to mean bad journalism. --Graham Greene (1904—1991) English novelist. _Ways of Escape_ [1980] During the course of this administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levied against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and sap its safety; they might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation; but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment in the public indignation. --Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826) American statesman and president [1801—1809]. In his second Inaugural Address. If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM. --Lyndon B. Johnson (1908—1973) American Democratic statesman, President [1963—1969]. Quoted in William B. Whitman _The Quotable Politician_, p. 286 [2003]. - John Burns, the great New York Times reporter, offers us a brutally blunt assessment of how badly Western correspondents covered Saddam Hussein's regime. His report, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Editor & Publisher, is spreading rapidly on the Internet and is bound to have an impact on the public's already low respect for most journalists. The compulsively candid Burns, until recently the New York Times bureau chief in Iraq, wrote his comments for the new book "Embedded: The Media at War in Iraq" (The Lyons Press), a collection of first-person accounts by journalists in Iraq. Burns, who has covered China, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan and Bosnia, says the terror of Saddam Hussein's Iraq was unmatched anywhere in the world, except perhaps by North Korea today. Iraq was a vast slaughterhouse, he says, but most Western reporters worked hard to keep the news from getting out because they were afraid of losing access or getting expelled from Iraq. The monstrous savagery of life under Saddam — the vast tortures and up to a million dead — was "the essential truth that was untold by the vast majority of correspondents," he writes. Burns laid some of this out earlier in the Times — the bribes and gifts from journalists to Saddam's henchmen, with reporters turning over copies of their stories to show how friendly they were to the regime. "A rigorous system for controlling and monitoring Western journalists has been in place in Iraq for decades, based on a wafer-thin facade of civility," he wrote in the Times last April 20. In his "Embedded" article, Burns is more caustic about the payoffs by journalists. He says big shots at the information ministry took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from TV reporters, "who then behaved as if they were in Belgium." Will these unnamed TV reporters be called to account? As an example of evasive noncoverage, Burns cites the reluctance of most reporters to say anything about Abu Ghraib prison, the heart of Saddam's reign of terror. Burns says he couldn't find a single colleague in journalism who had read the human rights reports about butchery at the prison. Last October, when President Bush's pressure caused Saddam to announce a limited amnesty at Abu Ghraib, the BBC didn't think it was worth sending anyone to the prison. Burns writes: "You had the BBC thinking it was inappropriate to go there because it means that it causes trouble." Of the reporters who did go to the prison, he says, "Ninety-eight percent of them had never heard of Abu Ghraib. Had no idea what it was." After the amnesty turned into a mob scene and a near-riot and unofficial jail break, some groups marched to the intelligence ministry. Burns says this was a phenomenal story, an actual protest in a terrorized land, but "some of my colleagues chose not to cover that." No use reporting real news if it's going to cause any inconvenience. "There is corruption in our business," Burns writes. "In the run-up to this war, to my mind, there was a gross abdication of responsibility." The usual rationalization by wayward correspondents is that Saddam's horrors couldn't be reported without jeopardizing the lives of sources and reporters. CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, offered that lame excuse in a notorious New York Times op-ed piece on April 11. It was a devil's handshake: CNN got to stay in Iraq; Saddam Hussein got good press. Eason said he knew all about the beatings and electroshock torture. One woman who talked to CNN was beaten daily for months in front of her father, then torn limb from limb. Her body parts were left in a bag on her family's doorstep. But CNN's viewers hadn't been told. Burns has no patience with excuses like Eason's. He is a reporter who was jailed for six days for his reporting in China and who risked being killed by Saddam's regime in its dying days. At one point, he wondered whether he would wind up in Abu Ghraib himself. He says of Iraq: "We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. They (reporters) rationalized it away." Though President Bush chose to make weapons of mass destruction his principal argument against Saddam, Burns writes, "this war could have been justified any time on the basis of human rights alone. This was a grotesque charnel house, and also a genuine threat to us. We had the power to end it and we did end it." [...] --John Leo "Reporters ignored atrocities to get access in Saddam's Iraq" [22 September 2003] & see: The list was so long that there was no time during the live shot to provide context. I read the information minister's points verbatim. Moments later, I was downstairs in the newsroom on the first floor of the Information Ministry. Mr. Johnson approached, having seen my performance on a TV monitor. "You were a bit flat there, Peter," he said. Again, I was astonished. The president of CNN was telling me I seemed less-than-enthusiastic reading Saddam Hussein's propaganda. --Peter Collins "Corruption at CNN" [15 April 2003] - - Former CBS News president Van Gordon Sauter said Thursday that Dan Rather's liberal bias has so permeated the "CBS Evening News" that even he can't stand to watch anymore. "I stopped watching it some time ago," the ex-network news boss writes in today's Los Angeles Times. "The unremitting liberal orientation finally became too much for me." --Carl Limbacher, "Ex-CBS News Prez Can't Stand Rather", [January 2005] - The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village. --H. (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan (1911—1980) Canadian professor and author. _The Gutenberg Galaxy_ [1962] A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a hundred thousand bayonets. --Napoleon I (1769—1821) Emperor of France [1804—1815]. Attributed in "The Leisure Hour" (weekly mag.) [10 March 1853]. - On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel's opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza's Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world. The footage, with a voice-over by France 2's Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead. [...] But we now know that this whole fiesta of violence and incitement was based on a lie. For whatever people think they saw in those 55-seconds, it was not the death of that boy. He was not killed by Israeli bullets; he was not killed at all. At the end of France 2’s famous footage, he was still alive and unharmed. The whole thing was staged, a fantastic piece of play-acting, an elaborate fabrication designed to blacken Israel’s name, and incite the Arab and Muslim mobs to mass murder. It was, in short, a modern-day blood libel, an updated version of the medieval calumny that the Jews target gentile children for murder — which itself caused the murder of thousands of Jews over the centuries. How do we know the footage was a lie? Because many of us have seen the evidence for ourselves in a French courtroom. Ironically, this blood libel was only exposed to public view because France 2 and its correspondent Enderlin brought a libel suit against a French media watchdog, Philippe Karsenty, for saying that the "killing" was "pure fiction" and that al-Dura wasn’t dead at all. [...] I was in the Paris court on the day France 2 reluctantly complied and I saw the footage (minus a few minutes that Enderlin had excised and which are said to be even more explosive). This showed clearly that the whole thing was a set-up from start to finish. The cameraman said the Israelis had fired continuously for 45 minutes. Yet the footage did not show people falling under fire. It showed instead Palestinians demonstrating, throwing rocks and so forth, in a positively carnival atmosphere. Youths strutted about, giving declamatory interviews and grinning at the camera; boys rode by on bicycles. And no one showed any sign of injury. There were no wounds; there was no blood. From time to time, demonstrators were pushed on to stretchers and into ambulances — but with no evidence of any disturbance to their anatomy. Enderlin said he had cut out the scenes of al-Dura’s actual death agony because "it was unbearable". But when the footage was shown, it became clear no such scenes existed. There was no agony and no death. Al-Dura and his father showed no sign of any wound or injury throughout. Supposedly riddled with bullets, their bodies remained totally unmarked. There was no blood anywhere. A red stain on the child turned out to be a piece of red cloth, which suddenly materialised. You see the boy slumping to the ground. But before he does so, while he is still hanging on to his father and screaming, a voice shouts in Arabic: "The boy is dead! The boy is dead!" Asked to explain this astounding prescience, Enderlin’s team replied that the Arabic in fact meant: "The boy is in danger of dying." At this, the courtroom laughed out loud. After Enderlin pronounces the boy to be dead, the corpse mysteriously assumes four different positions. You see the cameraman’s fingers making the "take two" sign to signal the repeat of a scene. And then you see the lifeless martyr raise his arm and peep through his fingers — presumably to check whether his thespian services are still required or whether he can now get up and go home. --Melanie Phillips, "Faking a Killing" [July 2008] - There are two ways, I suppose, one could inform readers of the Geneva Convention stipulation against using places of worship to conduct military attacks. One might be to headline saying that Terrorists Attack Coalition Forces From Mosques. That would be one way to present the information. Another might be to say: Mosques Targeted in Fallujah. That was the Los Angeles Times headline this morning. --Donald Rumsfeld (b. 1932) American Secretary of Defense [1975—1977] & [2001—2006]. DoD news briefing [27 April 2004] - - Not long ago, one of the nationally known picture magazines had a photograph of a man prostrate on subway stairs. For thirty minutes many people passed him by without ever a helping hand. The editorial comment was about the coldness of the modern man in the face of distress. What was forgotten was that the photographer of the picture magazine did nothing for thirty minutes for the afflicted individual except to snap pictures and make his own living. --Fulton John Sheen (1895—1979) Roman Catholic bishop; the first popular preacher to appear on television. _On Being Human_ [1982] - - Are we about to see a dramatic shift in the political landscape? If the findings of a new CBS News/New York Times poll are accurate, the answer may well be yes....The Republican-controlled Congress gets even lower marks, an approval rating of only 23 percent. That's just a little better than [the 20 percent approval in] 1994 when dissatisfaction was running so high that Republicans wrested control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. --Bob Schieffer on the May 9, 2006 CBS Evening News. One week before the elections, Americans are confused about the present, pessimistic about the future and cynical about the ability of government to make things better. ... Republicans seem to be failing in their effort to make these elections a referendum on the President [Clinton]. ... It's hard to gauge who'll be helped or hurt by all this gloom come Election Day. --Bob Schieffer on the Nov. 2, 1994 Evening News, first reporting the same poll referenced above showing the Democratic-controlled Congress at 20 percent approval. - I think this is another reflection of the overwhelming journalistic tilt towards liberalism and those programs. --Time Washington contributing editor Hugh Sidey responding to a caller who asked if journalists are in favor of affirmative action, [21 July 1995] C-SPAN "Washington Journal". - When the issue is gun control, you may have heard innumerable times that murder rates are much lower in countries like Britain or Germany, which have more restrictive gun control laws than ours. But how often — if ever — have you heard that murder rates are much higher than ours in some other countries like Russia or Brazil that also have more restrictive gun control laws than ours? How often have you heard that murder rates are lower in some countries, such as Switzerland and Israel, where gun ownership is more widespread than in the United States? Not very often, if at all, because liberals in the media leave the impression that gun control is a key to the murder rate. They have every right to believe that. But that does not include the right to filter out facts that go against their theory. --Thomas Sowell (b. 1930) American economist and author. "No media bias?" [1 July 2003] - The word 'conservative' is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naďve, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third- rate decade, the nineteen-sixties. --Norman Tebbit (b. 1931) British Conservative politician. In _Independent_ [24 February 1990]. There is a liberal bias. It's demonstrable. …There is a, particularly at the networks, ... there is a liberal bias. There is a liberal bias at Newsweek, the magazine I work for ... [ABC White House reporter] Brit Hume's bosses are liberal and they're always quietly denouncing him as being a right-wing nut. --Newsweek Washington Bureau Chief Evan Thomas in an admission on "Inside Washington" [12 May 1996]. When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. --"Finding Biases on the Bus", _The New York Times_ [1 August 2004] - Key U.S. Ally on Iraq Wins 4th Term in Australia -- headline, _The Washington Post_, [10 October 2004], *p. A34* Spanish Socialists Oust Party of U.S. War Ally -- headline, _The Washington Post_, [15 March 2004], *front page* & note: In April 2004, when Spain's new premier announced a withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq, it was front-page news in both the New York Times and the Washington Post. A year later, when Silvio Berlusconi hinted he might start bringing Italian troops home, that was also a page-one article in the Times. The Post gave front-page treatment to a July 2004 piece about the pending departures of coalition members Norway, New Zealand, Thailand, and the Philippines, and the probable exits of Holland and Poland. We could go on, but you get the point: When a U.S. ally pulls out of Iraq, it's a Big Story — another sign of George Bush's "dwindling" coalition; a further "blow" to the war effort. But what about when an ally, or two, re-ups? Well, that's No Big Deal. Earlier this month, Japan decided to keep its contingent in Iraq for another year — until December 14, 2006. Meanwhile, Prime Minister John Howard said Australia's 450-troop team, which is guarding Japan's task force in southern Iraq, would stay past its May deadline and remain as long as the Japanese did. Good news for the coalition, good news for the Iraqis. Yet somehow — wonder of wonders — this story warranted zero coverage in both the Times and the Post. Okay, maybe it wasn't A1, above-the-fold material. But to not mention it at all? In fairness to the Times and the Post, most other major U.S. newspapers — including the Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times — ignored the story, too. --"The Scrapbook," _The Weekly Standard_ [26 December 2005] - end page | MACARTHUR (DOUGLAS) - MALICE | MAN - MARINES | MARRIAGE | MARTYRS - MAUGHAM (WILLIAM SOMERSET) | McCARTHY - MEANNESS | MEDIA (THE) | MEDICINE - MEMORIAL DAY | MEMORIES - MEMORY | MEN - MEN v. WOMEN | MENTAL ILLNESS - MILK | MIND (THE) - MINDING OWN BUSINESS | MINNESOTA - MISERY | MISFORTUNE - MISSOURI | MISTAKES | MISTAKEN IDENTITY - MODESTY | MONEY | MONROE - MOON | MORAL ASSASINATION - MORALITY | MORNING - MOUNTAINS | MOVIE DIALOGUE - MUSHROOMS | MUSIC - MYTHOLOGY | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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